The Lay of the Land

Return on iLandMan (ROI)

In a three year time frame the team at Escondido Resources carved out 60,000 acres from a 200,000 acre prospective area. Drilled over 180 wells with better than a 98% success rate at completing them and producing gas from them. Then, divested the play for $250 MM only to reinvest and begin Escondido II. And to a (land)man, Escondido management says “iLandMan changed our lives in terms of organization and productivity.” As Escondido’s south Texas area Landman, Travis Walne, explains, “It became one of those moments where you couldn’t believe you ever did it any other way.”

From Manual to Phenomenal
Escondido had just begun a 200,000 lease check prior the Eagle Ford becoming such a popular trend. With offices in Midland and Houston, they were challenged by methods of sharing information on spreadsheets, email and paper. This was as recent as the Fall of 2007. Spring of 2008, the firm started using iLandMan. Walne describes, “Most of us are not highly computer savvy people, but the user-friendliness and comprehensiveness of this program has led to a sense of leadership from our land group. Everything we need is right in front of us, and if we have a question it is usually answered in the online help instructions.” If management has questions, Escondido land has answers. “It has been a phenomenal feat for our group”, Walne says.

Office Online
Essentially, Walne remarks casually, “iLandMan has created a neatly structured, formulated, and reliable office at my fingertips. Using this one program eliminated a lot of conference calls, reduced email back and forth, and cut down on confusion about who was doing what. Questions about what have we accomplished, what we need to accomplish, and what exactly is our status on certain leases. Those situations have gone away.” The time savings and improved communication has provided a bonafide leap in productivity, as well as, the reliability and accessibility of information for the company.

Acquisition to Land Management to Drilling Plan
Knowing what is owned and having all the associated documents right at hand is now indispensable for Escondido, and Walne will soon be using iLandMan mapping to plan for next year. “We already use iLandMan for budgeting on our leasing and drilling program. We use it to keep track of our drilling obligations too. I was just asked to come up with a drilling program for 2012 so mapping that project in iLandMan will make it far easier for us to visually see the schedule.” Just another way iLandMan extends value beyond land to stay ahead of the drill bit.

In closing, Walne states, “In the next three years, I predict the brokers and company landmen who adopt iLandMan as their platform for the front end of oil and gas exploration activity will be among the most efficient and profitable producers. Those who use iLandMan will simply be ahead of the curve.” Meanwhile, sounds like Escondido is enjoying their new workstyle.

Tim’s Playbook

Moving Thought Upstream: iLandMan’s Near Future: By Tim Supple, President

We progress, or we decline in our ability to compete. Let me share one of my eye opening moments. In the early 1980’s, a good friend of mine selling IBM computers demonstrated a $5,000.00 computer, with 5 megabits of hard drive memory, (all programs and file storage were on floppy disk), a 12” monochrome screen and a printer that was so loud it had to be in a separate room. I asked him why would I buy a “computer” and change the way we do things, when I had been running a successful company without one. His answer still haunts me to this day. He said, “Tim, you’re living under the delusion that you have a choice. The only choice you really have is to stay ahead of the competition or fall behind.” Where would you or I be if we had decided not to buy the computer? At iLandMan we serve those businesses that want to make the choice to stay ahead of the competition. To stay ahead of the competition, business must continue to invest in new technology.

iLandMan’s total focus is on making sure our clients have the most intuitive and effective technology to increase their profits and professional work environment. Every day we are researching and improving our solution to make sure our clients have just that. The business model we employ brings new technology and applications before the client even knows it’s possible. As technology improves, so do our clients through the program and functionality of iLandMan. Every year iLandMan spends a formidable portion of our budget
developing and implementing new features so our clients have the best possible experience for the result of a more profitable business. All of these improvements are provided as a fraction of the cost of the assets being leased and managed. In the last few years we have invested well over seven figures to accomplish this.

On May 23-25th in Denver at DUO, you can see improvements we have made to GIS mapping, incorporation of more “web services”, more special query functionality, and greater “on demand” data importation.

Examples of features for the near future:

Incorporation of Web Services from public and private entities, such as:

– County/parish court houses and tax assessor maps and data for title records

These are just a few of our enhancements for the upcoming year. Technology of the future will have its value rooted not just in the programming, but how well it connects, integrates and implements the technology of other services and data sources. We commonly refer to this as the Convergence™ iLandMan is offering to the oil and gas industry from the land discipline.

At iLandMan we embrace and accentuate the tract and build around it so the landman contribution is as credible as any other professional in the oil and gas industry. That’s iLandMan. Rely on us to keep you posted on what’s next.

Map Tracts

Spring 2011 Provides a Better View

Call About Our Mapping Enhancements. You will be amazed to see the new features added just in the last 90 days.

What follows are only a few highlights.

– Subscriptions of parcel, well and unitization data is now available, and we are adding locations every day. The information is uploaded to the iLandMan project map by
turning on the subscription. iLandMan staff can assist users with acquiring the database information in a format that can be uploaded to their project.

– Searching layer metadata. The user can now search the information contained in the layers through various methods.

– Pop up layer legend provides ease of use and maximizes viewing area on map. (See map image pictured right)

– New MXD (ArcMap file format, which manages layers) uploads allow the more sophisticated mapping personnel to construct any layer needed and upload them directly to their project map.